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The Posting Policy of The Geneva Push website is so good I'm posting about it. I actually found these guidelines assuring as I read through their challenge to self-control on the web and their requirement to maintaining a high-level 'tone' in all conversation on their site.

It begins:

"The Internet is a brilliant place to witness people behaving badly. The belief that the web is somehow unreal has encouraged unbelievable behaviour. It is a sad fact that even believers have been known to express themselves in a particular way online that would be considered sinful in any other context. As a Christian network, The Geneva Push encourages its members to speak the truth, but to do so in love."

In general this is a rebuke much needed by our generation I think. It is commonplace today to be exposed, even regretably involved, in the fierce fighting of Christian argumentativeness, even amongst reformed Evangelical circles (such as the long comment threads recently on The Briefing).

Ironically, we children of the reformation show off our 'maturity' by pulling apart one another in critique and debate, often beginning with theology but ending in personal conflict and even fall out. Are we using our knowledge to love or to pull down?

Sadly, in a world of speed limits and regulation, guidelines are needed because we as people need to be told how to behave; by nature we are creatures that fail to govern ourselves internally and automatically. We need external controls to impose standards upon us; we need to be lead by God's Spirit.

Offline we are generally more careful to show self-control because our cultural etiquette, which itself is an external force providing norms of acceptance, provides us our much needed help in governing our behaviour.

But in the last decade or so, blogs and Facebook have of course allowed a new space in our lives where we can find it so easy to forget to apply these norms and in this sense forget 'ourselves'. Like failing to think about the risks of entering into a friendly game of gambling, we can leave ourselves open to losing many of our usual restraints. We can so easily become lazy, and ultimately careless, because without these automatic rules for engagement, we have no necessary commitment to a certain standard of communication that will likely be appreciated by all parties involved in our conversations.

Ironically these are often the most public of spaces where we can do the most damage to our community, to our churches.

So it's probably fair to say that in recent times Facebook (and the like) have become not only a force for much good, but now also one of the most significant forces for bad within our community life. Just as for Businesses and other organisations more generally, the effect of Facebook upon the dynamics of our community life have surely emerged as one of the greatest challenges now for church leaders.

Perhaps we need to follow the lead of The Geneva Push; perhaps we need our leaders to give us policies to help us govern our use of social media as members -- not necessarily as prescriptive regulations, but as guiding principles that would help us to think through and apply the gospel of grace, the command to love, and the call to growth in maturity within the context of our online community relationships.

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Christian Reflections

The Briefing

Phillip Jensen

Pete Woodcock & Cornerstone

I’m attracted to big ideas and new thoughts. Jesus himself was considered an astounding thinker in his time. But today we tend not to realize how our hopes in development, science and reform have nothing on the promises he made. About Christianity, we think the world of the twentieth-century is a different world. But it is about Christian things and the Christian religion that we should be turning our attention. Not only has Jesus changed our world already since the first Christmas and the first Easter, but he promises to do it further, radically further. I’m talking about more than the fact that Christian beliefs have shaped modern society [the reformation for example fueled the industrial revolution]. I also recognize the perception that Christian church attendance is in decline. But Christianity itself continues to grow. That’s because the Christian way is much more than Sunday attendance. What is Christianity and what is Christian or to put it precisely, ‘Christ’-like-living? This is not a silly question; particularly because of the way that our modern secular culture of Christmas-consumerism has clouded our clarity. That is one of many reasons why this site exists. Talking Christianity talks all about Christianity and about Christian thinking because actually what we need most in the twentieth-century it is a review of the basics of a Christ-centered view of the world. And, believe it or not, that makes our subject all about church too. That’s because, what is the Church? What actually is the church of God? Church is not a building or a meeting. The church is God’s people, his community united in Christ himself. That is, the church itself is the Christian people, all united together by common faith in Jesus. In that sense, this site is all about church because it is all about the Christian people. I hope by sharing Christian views about the world to give a window into the Christian view of the world; a window that I hope actually gives a view of Jesus, a view of Christ himself. The event of Christmas and the calendar tradition of Easter have become tools for marketers to fuel our commitment as consumers. It is a strange scenario in a secular society that swears no allegiance to the Lord himself and in fact more often than not today we only hear mention of Jesus Christ when someone in our workplaces or bus malls can find no other phrase more appropriate for a curse. Who is Jesus that his name today is heard in every corner of our world, on the lips of both those who bless one another and those who curse? Of course, the Christians call Jesus Christ by that title because they also call him the son of God, a phrase that is used not only by the Christian but by the Bible too; but what does that mean? But just as important in asking who is Jesus Christ is another related question, where is Jesus? And another more basic question might be what is Jesus; a question followed closely by who was Jesus when he came. That’s why this site talks all about Jesus, and not just about him, but also how Jesus has changed the world and will in fact change the world more fundamentally still. This is the message of the Gospel, the gospel of Jesus, or the good news of Christ Jesus. One of the central questions we ask on this site is both what is gospel and what is the gospel? How is the gospel message, that is very closely associated with the four gospels found in the beginning of the second section of the Bible, the New Testament, how is this good news of any significance for us today as modern people? One big difference is that it is a free gospel, unlike all the other gospels that exist in the world. The message at the heart for the Christians is a true story of the free gift of God’s forgiveness through a man like no other, Jesus. In the Holy Bible, as we open the pages of Scripture, we discover the facts of who this man was and who he is now, today. It will take some bible study. Of course we might ask which bible? As there are many gospels there are many bibles. The word bible means book, but the Christian book that has been called The Book is the collection of 66 books from the Scriptures of Israel (the Old Testament) and the collection of writings of the first Christians, which we have in the New Testament. Put together my many authors over hundreds of years across continents and cultures, it is the bibles view of itself is that it is the word of God to us even today. Who is God? Where do we find God? We in fact need to do little more than open up a book. But where in the bible do we find God, we might ask? Actually it is the message of the book as a whole that we have been describing as the gospel. Every part of the bible reveals God, as does the whole. So what is the Bible? In the Bible and by the Bible, God speaks of himself to us. Bible scripture and every bible verse together reveals God as we listen and understand what he has done in the past and what he has said about those things. That’s why this blog talks all about Bible and gives bible verses at every point. One of the biggest questions people ask typing in their search is help me find God. To find God the Bible says is like to find gold and with it silver and all types of costly stones as well. What is God? Surprisingly, the Bible in fact says that God Is. It’s more than he ‘just is’ but that is part of it. He is the only one who always is; the only I Am. Who is God? Part of the answer the Bible gives relates to the fact that God has revealed himself as the God of. He is the God of certain people, for example Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of ancient Israel. He revealed himself as the God of Israel. More than that, we know him as the God of Jesus. How is God the one of these people of the past, and to be so now too? Where is God? Again and again people go searching for God, going to the internet search and praying Help me God with their keyboard. We search asking God where are you? God is in heaven but he reveals us to us as God the Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is good and he has shown his love to us. That’s why this site promotes the love of God as revealed already in what he has done and has been written down for us. I love God and I want the Kingdom of God to come and the will of God to be done in this world and with this world. That’s why I talk all about God, or what might be called theology, the study of God. I want to promote thinking about God, and by focusing on God I want to highlight the benefits of the Bible’s theology for our lives and future as people.